THE WILD BIRDS OF KILLEEVY.* WE mean no disparagement to
Miss Mulholland's book, which, indeed, strikes us as showing an advance on any work of hers that we have seen before, if we say that it is a romance rather than a story of real life. The scene, with its cloudless sky, "glitter- ing mountain crags," "dazzling ocean," and "plains tawny, purple, and olive," is a highly idealised picture of western Ireland; and still more remote from reality are the wondrous pair whom a strange chance has given at once to the little moun- tain village, Fanchea,—with the marvellous voice that makes her, if she will only follow the career, the rival of the queens of song ; and Kevin, who though unable to read at twelve, blossoms out before he is thirty into a poet whom all England delights to honour. But there are moods in all readers whose judgment is worth having, to which romance appeals, and there is a teaching which romance is best fitted to give. We find a charm in the workmanship, and a truth in the utterances of this book, which makes us forget, or, at least, not care to remember, that the life which it pictures was never lived under the sun.
Fanchea, the child of Irish peasants, is left an orphan at seven years old. Famine, and the fever that comes after famine, have taken from her her father and mother; and she becomes, by her father's last request, the charge of Kevin, a lad some twelve years her senior, in whom the influence of story and legend, and the natural beauty that lies about him, are developing the genius of a poet. The life of these two, as they wander by mountain and sea, is described with much beauty of language, but, perhaps, at too great a length. We are not sorry when the action of the story begins. Fanchea is tempted into the tents of some gipsies, tempted against her promise not to go near them, by the fascination of an organ (surely an idealised instrument), which plays the Hallelujah Chorus "as if the strongest angels were singing and shouting together." The gipsies carry her off, and make a harvest of gain out of her marvellous singing. After a year's time, an interval which braces up the lad's dreamy nature to action and resolve, Kevin starts to search for her. The stories of the two wanderers, who are not made to meet till the very end of the volume, may be allowed, with the reserve before made, to be exceptionally well-told. The girl runs away from the gipsies, and meets with exactly the people who are wanted to develope the story of her life. The Signora, with the passion for art to which she has never been able to give an adequate expression ; Herr Harfenspieler, who has given to music the same devotion and found the same failure; and Lord Wilderspin, the wealthy and eccentric noble- man, need not be conceived of as real persons ; but they are the characters of a pleasing little drama. The whole of Fanchea's life at Lord Wilderspin's house, where the Herr and the Signora train her to be the great prima donna of the future, makes a very attractive picture. We may mention with especial praise the scene where the girl rehearses the part of Gretchen by moonlight in the great gallery of the house. Kevin, meanwhile, is equally fortunate. To be assistant in a bookseller's shop is just the ideal position for a lad whose intellectual appetite is in its first freshness ; and it has also the advantage of introducing him to the wisest and most appreciative of patrons. Kevin's story, however, is naturally inferior to Fanchea's. Miss Mulholland has not, we should say, equally realised it to herself; and while • The Wild Birds of Killeen. By Roza Mulholland. London : Burns and Oates. we can see for ourselves that Fanchea is charming, we have to take Kevin's cleverness very mach for granted.
But the charm of the book is more in its thought and senti- ment than in its story. The talk of the two artists, each of them marred by some weakness that has hindered them from reaching their aim, is especially good. Here are some fragments of it :—
" I was born in Verona,' said the Signora, in answer to a question. —‘ And I in Nuremberg,' said Herr Harfenspieler, touching his most delicate string with a loving finger. '1 know your Verona. What a dream ! That is why your face reminds me of the angels in Fma Angelico's pictures,' he added bluntly. am no flatterer, and you may not be heavenly for aught I know ; but I have seen you blowing a trumpet in one of the Paradisiacal visions of the angelic master. Twang went a deep chord across the violin; and a silent sob echoed it in the Signora's heart.—' That was said long ago,' she said ; but it is like a sorry old jest to hoar it now.'—' Why ? Angels may get worn faces for a time, perhaps through wearying after the good in some human soul. When that soul is won their wrinkles probably disappear. Whatever is intrinsically good and beautiful remains a perpetual fact, and never can be destroyed ; it is only what is ugly, wrong, discordant, that is failure and negation. What is time ? Ach —! Music will never cease.' Hereupon a burst of delicious melody swept through the quiet and darkening room ; and noiselessly the Signora wept. 'Juliet was born in your Verona,' continued the old professor, laying down his bow ; and Juliet is a fact, though oho never was clothed in flesh and blood. The deep red rose that comes every June is a fact, though each time it sheds its leaves we can
scarcely believe it ever was, or over will return.' 'It is pleasant to me to listen,' said the Signora. Life does not seem so wasted when one gets rid of the idea of success and failure
My youth was one long passion of longing to create the beautiful Life broke my tools and laughed at my folly ; and yet there is some- thing dwelling with me for all that which binds up the sorest wounds of a broken spirit. Art has allowed me to live in her house, though her dearest tasks have been given elsewhere. I have tried to re- member that "they also serve who only stand and wait." The long patience, the readiness to do if called, the meekness forced upon one at being always passed over—these must shelter one from the charge of waste. The joy at seeing others do, takes the place of feverish desires for self. One grows content to glean where others bear the sheaves, if only the harvest be somehow gathered in.'" No one will find The Wild Birds of Killeevy tedious, and no one, we think, will fail to recognise in it an elevating and purifying influence.
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